back to article Police pen shortage threatens Irish public order

An Irish judge has expressed concerns that a police biro shortage may pose a serious threat to public order in Limerick. According to the Irish Independent, several miscreants have been dragged before the beak for "engaging in a threatening and abusive manner" in the public office at Henry Street gardaí station as a result of …

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  1. Ole Juul
    Coat

    formalities

    "to sign on as a condition of his bail relating to a separate matter"

    Surely a gentleman's agreement would suffice.

  2. wyatt

    Do British custody suits use electronic pads and a stylus? Saves the pen issue straight away!

    Having said that, do they have computers that side of the border?!

    1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

      Electronic pads are useless for signatures

      Delivery guys ask me to 'sign' electronic pads. I would be worried that the words on the thing I am signing could change with the wind, but the device cannot record variations in pressure, and cannot keep up at all. The result is a random spiky mess that bears no relation to my signature.

      The problem here is that occasionally, a few policemen do not like that their victims have been granted bail, so they make it difficult for the victims to keep their bail conditions. Electronic pads are not going to prevent that. The judge has the right idea - if some policemen are using bail conditions to cause trouble, the solution is to make bail unconditional. The same thing used to happen in the UK. (I have no idea if it still does.)

      1. Sir Runcible Spoon

        Re: Electronic pads are useless for signatures

        The judge could always fine the police a years worth of biro's every time this happens. They are obstructing the process of law after all.

        1. 's water music

          Re: Electronic pads are useless for signatures

          The judge could always fine the police a years worth of biro's

          Not a large sum apparently

      2. wyatt

        Re: Electronic pads are useless for signatures

        I disagree, the quality of the signature is not important in this day and age: the fact you have a 'mark' is all anyone is concerned about. If that wasn't so then devices which took signatures would be refreshed periodically so they worked. I use to support finger print taking machines (Livescan) for the UK Police. They used electronic signature pads and were only ever replaced at the customers (custody suites) request, often when they'd totally failed rather than not providing a good signature 'picture'.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Do British custody suits use electronic pads and a stylus?

      You're forgetting the environment. If it's electronic you'd have to measure in microseconds to time how long it would take for it to get nicked (pardon the pun)..

    3. Ross K Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re. Saves the pen issue straight away!

      Do British custody suits use electronic pads and a stylus? Saves the pen issue straight away!

      Why use an electronic pad? That's a bit like the Americans trying to develop a fancy pen to go into space, while the Soviets used pencils...

      The biro works - although the cops in this station obviously needed to tie it down with a bit of string.

      And it's custody suite, not custody suit BTW...

      1. wyatt

        Re: Re. Saves the pen issue straight away!

        Cheers, get it right most of the time!

        1. A K Stiles
          Coat

          Re: Re. Saves the pen issue straight away!

          Is a custody suit one where the jacket fastens up the back, and the sleeves are a bit too long?

          1. Arachnoid

            the sleeves are a bit too long?

            That would be your day coat ,nor does it come with a pen pocket so put it back this instant...........Im waiting to sign on when you're finished.

          2. Tom 11
            Coat

            Re: Re. Saves the pen issue straight away!

            No, it's the yellow and viscous one!

      2. Will 20

        Re: Re. Saves the pen issue straight away!

        The reason an electronic pad is used, is so that the custody record can be sent straight to NICHE rather than scanned into the computer, and then added laboriously as a scanned document, with the details typed into the computer. The pads are usually embedded in the custody desk, which means all the crims can do is rip away the stylus

      3. Number6

        Re: Re. Saves the pen issue straight away!

        I thought the custody suit was the outfit with the arrows on it.

      4. Anonymous John

        Re: Re. Saves the pen issue straight away!

        Not the "pencils in space" nonsense again. They are made of wood and graphite, both flammable, especially in a pure oxygen atmosphere. And bits of broken leads floating about in zero G isn't good either. NASA only buys Space Pens and did not pay the development costs.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes we make them here,

      we also make the Software, Ram, Hard disks, Psu's, and so on,....

  3. Anonymous Coward 101

    I speculate that there are ridiculous bureaucratic hurdles to getting new stationary. For example, if an officer loses a pen, he has to type a report detailing what he thinks happened to it before he can get a new one. Or, there was a blanket cut back on stationary 'to save money'. Something stupid like that.

    1. 's water music

      not moving

      down voted for homonym.

      Sorry. I sure hope nobody post about less pens in the republic :-(

      1. O RLY
        Headmaster

        Re: not moving

        It appears Muphry's Law caught that you were being pedantic about use of homonyms while using less when you should have used fewer.

    2. Ole Juul

      I speculate that there are ridiculous bureaucratic hurdles to getting new stationary.

      Then just go buy a box of pens, and fight the bureaucratic fight where it belongs. (hint: that's not at the front counter)

    3. glen waverley

      ghost of the civil dead

      Your humble correspondent was once a sentenced to a period of light labor in a large bureaucratic organisation*. During a spending clampdown in the mid '70s**, us (very) junior clerks were required to show our worn out ball point pens to the senior clerk in order to be issued with a new pen. It was said at the time that this was to deter us from taking pens home and next morning asking for a new pen.

      wonder the the garda are (suspected of) running the same scam?

      * as an employee,for the sake of clarity.

      ** 1970s. Not 1870s.

  4. Semtex451
    IT Angle

    Slow news day? It comes to something when El Reg has to scan the Irish Independant for news and then picks a non-story with all the relevance of parochial tittle-tattle.

    We expect better..

    1. 's water music

      We expect better..

      No. We don't.

      :-)

    2. Kane

      "We expect better.."

      In Bootnotes? No, we don't actually.

      1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

        Actually I did expect better.

        I expected at least one penis pun.

        (edit: thanks AC below.)

        1. Bill Neal

          Re: Actually I did expect better.

          Someone needs to check out the Pen Island website. Be careful when googling that one. Here, I'll save you the trouble. www.penisland.net

  5. hi_robb

    Hmm

    I know why they insist people sign using a pen...

    To be sure...

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My penis missing

    Sorry, pen!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't laugh

    At a state government department, not to be named, we were banned from ordering pens and other kit for 3 months. People brought in their own.

    1. 's water music

      Re: Don't laugh

      > At a state government department, not to be named, we were banned from ordering pens and other kit for 3 months. People brought in their own the ones they had pinched over the preceding months.

      there, ftfy

  8. Simon Harris

    What they need is...

    more bail-point pens

    1. Lester Haines (Written by Reg staff) Gold badge

      Re: What they need is...

      You know the preposterous pun punishment procedure: go directly to the naughty step, banned for a month, etc

      1. lawndart

        Re: What they need is...

        Crikey! I hate to think what the punishment would be for posting a humorous limerick about a limerick copper not being able to write something down.

        So I'm not going to.

        Someone else can take the flak.

        1. Ross K Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: What they need is...

          There was a judge from Limerick

          Who had no time for cops and their gimmicks

          "If you have no pens

          To sign in the crims

          Then your victory will have been pyrrhic"

          1. A K Stiles
            Joke

            Re: What they need is...

            Hmm - n sure whether that requires up or down voting...

            If you'd gone with 'gimmericks' and possibly 'pyrrerhic', it would definitely have been up, just for the joy of inventing words to rhyme more closely.

        2. Red Bren
          Coat

          Re: What they need is...

          There was a mean copper in Limerick

          Who's treatment of crims was sadistic

          The suspects on bail

          would land back in gaol

          When he wouldn't let them use his bic

    2. Tom 11

      Re: What they need is...

      Wayheyyyy Simon,

      Go on son! If only I could give you 2 upvotes.

  9. Michael 28

    Health and safety issue?

    Some people are "chewers". OTOH, is a pen a potential stabbing instrument?.

    "Sorry yer lordship. The defendant became entangled by his flares alighting from a chair, fell down a flight of stairs equipped with a perfectly sturdy handrail, suffering the much visible bruising and abrasions currently demonstrable in the process, until he finally came to rest, impaling his nether regions on a writing implement. A most unfortunate state of affairs."

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ah, Henry St. Garda station

    I once had my car nicked, apparently by someone who just wanted it to drive home in as it was left abandoned in a less-than-salubrious housing estate in the city. The Gardaí called me and told me that they'd recovered the car and that it was in the lock-up. When I arrived at the station, the car was pointed out to me and once I'd identified it as mine, I was left to my own devices. The driver-side window frame was bent out of shape and the ignition ripped out. After bending the frame back into a more reasonable shape I had to figure out how to start the thing. I managed to find the right pair of wires to hot-wire it and drove it home.

    This story has nothing to do with pens or bureaucracy or Garda ineptness or anything, really. It's just that I always chuckle when I remember that I had to learn how to hotwire my car in the lock-up of a Garda station, of all places.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    An alternative

    Why not just have an ink pad and take fingerprints. They do this in other parts of the world in which literacy keeps being bombed to very low levels.

    This would solve a couple of problems, such as sending your mate to sign the bail book. It can then be made electronic much easier - just need a fingerprint scanner.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: An alternative

      Or the judge could do away with the 'signing on' condition when granting bail?

      Cops really don't like interacting with the public unless it's on the their terms, do they?

  12. Nick Pettefar

    In Limerick at the police station

    Theres a "shortage of pens" situation

    When cons turn up to sign on

    They're told the pens are all gone

    (It's a sign of the state of the nation.)

    1. Ross K Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Bravo!

  13. This post has been deleted by its author

  14. WereWoof
    Coat

    It sounds utter *cough* pendomonium . . . . I`ll get my coat

  15. JMcL

    I blame Michael O'Leary

    After all Ryanair have been expanding in Shannon of late haven't they? The customer service agents probably need extra pens to drum on the counter while ignoring complaints:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/weird-wide-world/7866327/Ryanair-boss-Michael-OLearys-funniest-quotes-part-two.html?image=9

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